H817

June 20, 2016

Block 3: Activity 19 Reflections on our Project

Activity 19 provides an opportunity for reflection on my group’s achievements with our project. I have used the Gibbs Cycle of Reflection as a basis for my reflection. This reflection has been shared with my group and others in my tutor group. A shared group reflection document will also be produced and added to our website.

Description

We were put into our team by our tutor and given Digital Storytelling to develop as part of Block 3 of H817.

We introduced ourselves through an OULive session and migrated to Google Hangouts. We met twice a week to update progress and set tasks for next few days/activities. We also set up a Facebook Group (Private) to keep in touch with each other during the project as we were finding it difficult to follow threads through the group forum. We were faced with several technical issues around using Google Hangout and Facebook, however we worked together to resolve these issues.

A digital diary was created to keep us informed of tasks and dates due to ensure that we finished all the activities by the cut- off date.

Debbie started off the website and we worked on different aspects required to populate the pages. During this initial start- up period we learned new skills ie inserting videos, pictures, uploading documents.

We worked on personas, design patterns and principles, created a storyboard and from this elicited the important features to test through our prototype, we designed our prototype areas and added them to our prototype page.

We created our heuristic evaluation and each one of us undertook a walk-through of the website making changes where needed to meet the standards set out in our heuristic evaluation (Benson et al, 2001).

Finally, the reflections exercise both individual and Group reflections using the Gibbs Cycle of Reflection. After discussion and sharing of each other’s reflections, Debbie set up our group shared reflection document which we all contributed to.

Our team worked together to create a website called Digital Storytelling through Classical Interpretation. Within this site sits out prototype project with our vision to help support our users through the process of creating a digital story which tells the audience about an aspect of the ethics portrayed by drawing a comparison with Roman-Britain with EU of today.

Feelings:

Well done to everyone for pulling this together. I felt a sense of achievement as I have learned about digital storytelling and found out about lots of different resources which can be used to support this process. I believe we all achieved this through this project. It was good to work with and learn from others in the team. I did find it difficult to work as effectively and efficiently at a distance as I would if I was working with colleagues in one location. I look forward to visiting the websites of the other groups to find out about their learning experience.

We have completed as much as we could, given that this has been a hypothetical project.

Evaluation:

Positives

We undertook collaborative planning, shared work to meet targets, shared our skills with each other to help them develop and complete our project to our agreed (heuristic) standards. We all saw the project through to the end product.

I was able to use my existing and new skills to transfer my work into the website. However, I was also taken out of my comfort zone and this added to my learning experience.

We learned a little about the Classics from Cora Beth and considered these stories and artefacts and their impact on EU referendum ethical issues. I found the stories very interesting and worth further investigation.

The creativity and flexibility of our team in the approach and development of the project.

Less Positives

Sometimes we went round in circles and maybe weren’t as focused on storytelling and persona’s needs as we should have been – but we were able to pull ourselves back to meet the needs of the design, storyboards, prototype and heuristics.

Time involved to complete activities over the course of the project was intensive and has taken over my life. Flexibility was minimal as we set ourselves targets to keep on top of activities shown on our digital diary.

I felt that we duplicated work on occasions.

Analysis:

We have created an inviting and user friendly website which houses our planning stages, prototyping, heuristics and evaluation.

We have considered the needs of all our personas in our prototype so our project should support teacher and student users.

We have considered ethical issues that may arise with a project such as ours where users will be involved in publishing their work to a blog where others users on the project can comment. Also through other social media platforms.

Accessibility issues were part of the prototype ensuring that we had large print, transcripts and had considered podcasting. We also discussed the possibilities of translation into other languages.

The team all come from different educational backgrounds and brought a varied range of knowledge and skills to the project. Different approaches and needs resulted. Shared documents on occasions could be big as each of us considered our own set of needs, however we were good at agreeing on important features needed and were able to move forward.

Conclusion:

We could have agreed on layout of pages on the website eg text, colours and size, positioning of images and videos, the need for transcripts. This may save time during the course of the project.

Nominate one person to proof read additions to the web pages – perhaps on a weekly basis. Again this may save time during the course of a project.

Shared the leadership role – decide at the outset which weeks or activities we would be leading. We agreed at the beginning that we would take on roles as they arose and that that would give everyone a chance to experience the role. The Team Leader role was heavy even although we all had individual jobs to do to contribute.

Be more focussed upon the digital storytelling element and not so much on the context for storytelling (although it was very important).

Action Plan:

Agree on Team Roles at the beginning of the project.

Set standards of presentation for work added to the website.

Ensure that everyone knows what our objectives are from the beginning and review these regularly to ensure we are still on track.